Why would you need to edit a book if you understand that it is written metaphorically?
I said you could put a disclaimer on the front that says "This is a work of fiction." That isn't too hard.
(Hypothetically) You don't even need to remove its divine origin.
As that is a literal interpretation, yes, you would need to remove that. Again, the disclaimer takes care of that.
God is a father figure, and as a father his purpose is to guild his children successfully into adulthood. As a father myself, I can tell you that you need to dumb a lot of shit down so a child can even rudimentally understand it. Sometimes you even need to make stuff up. As children get older they can handle the more complex answers and see how fictions can encapsulate a truthful underlying concept.
If Christians think they have the truth, they should be okay with teaching people about Christianity at age 15 and up. I mean, it's not like it's a mountain of laughable bullshit to anybody that hasn't been indoctrinated into it at a young age. It's the truth, isn't it?
The problem isn't that children need different methods of learning than adults. The problem is that religion necessarily perpetuates itself by indoctrinating little kids during that critical stage where they uncritically absorb information from authority figures and they have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. Fundamentalist and liberal Christians alike feel this indoctrination at this age is of utmost importance; it is for any religion, simply because that religion would die within a few generations otherwise.
The bible was written for a simple and fairly brutal culture with very limited understanding of how anything works. God couldn't come down and say pork frequently contains a parasite which is undetectable given your current level of technology so you need to cook it until it reaches an internal temperature of 120C for a minimum of 7 minutes (which is also something beyond you technical capabilities at this juncture) so instead you get don't eat pork. It's telling your kid not to play with knives on a societal level.
Great. You've given a very concise explanation of why we should no longer learn about the world through reading the Bible. I don't mind throwing the whole thing out.
There is no need to re-write the book. There is a need to add explanations to it. God apparently does not want to come down and say "okay guys, you're older and wiser now so I have a few more things to tell you"
Joseph Smith would disagree. God spoke to them as late as the 1970s to let nonwhites into the priesthood, didn't he? Oh right, humans revised their religion.
I guess they would be filling the role of older sibling -- a little bit wiser and more worldly but still a long way off from real understanding.
I really can't agree with you there. Priests in that capacity can be too easily replaced with psychics, otherworldly mediums, and other charlatans. At least science is honest when it's looking for the answer but doesn't have it yet; I prefer not to get warm and fuzzy answers from bullshitters-in-chief.